This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in tins section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The following abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined as follows:    3GPP 3rd generation partnership project    DL downlink    eNB, eNodeB evolved node B/base station in an E-UTRAN system    E-UTRAN evolved, universal terrestrial radio access network (LTE)    HetNet heterogeneous network    HO handover    LTE long term evolution    LTE-A long term evolution advanced    MR measurement report    PCI physical cell identity    Pcell primary cell    PPI power preference identification    PUCCH packet uplink control channel    RA random access    RACH random access channel    RAT radio access technology    RSRP reference signal received power    RSRQ reference signal, received, quality    RACH random access channel    Scell secondary cell    SR scheduling request    TP throughput    TTT time-to-trigger    HE user equipment    UL uplink    UTRAN universal terrestrial radio access network
Current E-UTRAN specification as well as standard legacy UE assisted network controlled handover based mobility is built around the same structure: the UE in a connected mode is configured with a measurement configuration by the network. This configuration includes the necessary information for giving the UE clear instructions on what to measure on which carriers (and/or RATs) as well as the reporting rules.
Based on this configuration the UE can perform measurements according to at least the minimum performance requirements defined by specifications (e.g., see 3GPP TS 36.133), so that a set of tests are performed to ensure that the UEs fulfill these minimum performance requirements. From a system point of view it is important that the UEs at least fulfill these minimum performance requirements in order to ensure similar and homogeneous behavior among the UEs in the network. This can enable better tuning of the network settings and therefore better use of the available resources, etc.
This approach may work well in the current systems which has so far mostly been based on having good coverage and the mobility to ensure that the UEs are connected at any time in order to ensure best use of network resources as well as best user experience, e.g., in a form of the highest possible user throughput (TP) and lowest loss of service rates.
In the coming 3GPP releases the work, has already started to focus on small cell enhancements, specifically, how to increase the network capacity including user data TP in order to enable handling of the expected sharp increase of wireless data transmission in the future. It is expected that the future user demands for instant high TP as well as optimized UE power consumption will be an important challenge. In addition it is also foreseen that the amount of smart phones will increase significantly and many of these devices are likely to be always online. Being always online would mean that these devices would need continuous connected mode mobility, i.e., mobility by handover, which may increase significantly mobility signaling related load in the network.